Not All Bad (Just Mostly)

I haven't been with all bad men. Just mostly. My first husband is a good man. Sadly for him, the time we were together, I was not ready for a good man. A good man--a man who loved me--had to have something wrong with him. Anyone who loved me had to have something wrong with them. That's how self-destructive I was in those days. Committing slow suicide, the coward's way, every single day. All those messages, in all their various forms, telling me what a piece of shit I was, all those years of that, had finally sunk in. I was believing the nasty voices, and doing my best to eradicate myself and no longer be a problem to the people who had dumped their hateful stuff all over me.

But my first husband, he was a net of shining light that caught me and held me and nurtured me. Too bad I was a selfish wreck. Too bad for him. I did begin to embark on a path of healing in our 12 years together. I think what finally made me leave him was 2 things--I had fallen out of love, for a fact (I have doubts about how capable I am of monogamy), and also my guilt was too much. Guilt at how good he was to me and how bad I was to him. Not that he was perfect. He was kind of an enabler, in his nurturing goodness, and he tended to deny reality sometimes. I used to tell him his beard could be on fire and he would say it wasn't. He trusted people who weren't trustworthy. He also let me push him around and that was bad. I was too nuts to be able to make good decisions.

Also, we really should not have gotten married. The relationship had really ended, but he and I were so committed to working it out, committed to commitment (now the word commitment only leaves me thinking of psych hospitals). So, in order to jump start something that was already dead, like Frankenstein's monster, we got married. Bad plan.

I was no longer interested in sex with him. I wanted my own bedroom. I did not like how his breath smelled. I had affairs. He loved kids. In no way did I ever want children when I was with him. He tolerated all that and continued to treat me kindly. Unfailingly kindly. No, really. He did. My family loved him. My mother would tell me how much he loved me. Fortunately for him, I hope, he is married again (he is good at monogamy), with a child. I hope he is happy. I know he would be a good dad. He deserves happiness, and really, he is lucky I left him.

Of course, I left him, left him in the lurch, and walked straight into the arms of the X. Oh yes, him. I can say for a fact that a good way to learn self-love is to live with someone who hates you that much. If you are ready for that kind of arduous training, kind of like a boot camp of the heart located in hell, that is. And as we all know, that is certainly another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai